spoilers [SPOILERS] Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker

[Ran]

38 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

...who was it that laid down the idea that Luke had vanished years ago and was found on an isolated planet all on his own? That was Abrams. Clearly wanting Luke to be a Yoda figure but Yoda had a reason to have gone off into hiding and JJ didn't think that out.

We don't actually know that Abrams didn't suggest some reasons, so far as I know. I certainly don't think Abrams would have gone with the, "Luke has chosen to hide and quit, ignoring the fact that his friends and family and the Republic at least need him as a hero to help lead them" idea that Johnson decided to go with. I don't think Abrams really expected that Disney would give the 2nd film to someone who would then, with their permission, use an iconoclastic approach to what had come before. 

My guess is Abrams figured that they'd discover Luke had some important reason to be wherever he was -- guarding an artifact of immense power, or guarding some evil Sith site that could doom the galaxy, or he was a prisoner but had vital information, or _something_ -- and certainly I'm sure everyone who watched TFA came out with the idea that Luke was doing something so important that he went off the grid and was letting the Resistance be chipped away at because what he was doing was more vital.

[Lord Varys]

Not sure it makes much sense to figure out which director was responsible for what - they were both essentially hired hands, not exactly people who (necessarily) controlled the entire creative process there.

Besides, if there had been a reason why Luke had been where he was then Johnson would have been given that, no? But in the end the whole thing may have been changed twice - first when Johnson came up with his reason and then again when TROS again changed Luke's grumpy exile into something that was sort of part of an outgrowth of an anti-Sith/Palpatine mission that led nowhere.

Why Luke searched for some Sith planet and then abandoned that search without ever telling anyone that was searching for it isn't really made clear - much less the fact that Lando knowing about said search never told anyone anything about that. Could perhaps helped stopped the Snokatine gang.

[Raja]

Luke guarding an artifact or some evil Sith site would have been incredibly lame. People certainly react to these things differently and it is entirely subjective, as this thread has shown - to me, Luke, Rey & Kylo's story line were the best things about TLJ.

I also think putting the blame of Rian Johnson is a little weird and seem like a crutch to excuse bad story telling from the TROS writing team  - a lot of complaints about TROS are equally about the execution of the plot line & the terrible pacing.

Also, Chris Terrio being part of the writing team explains a lot. The BvS comparison is even more apt.

[Jeor]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

That said, I too was disappointed with the retread of the Imperial/Rebel dichotomy. This may be my Heir to the Empire bias showing, but I wanted an established but fragile New Republic dealing with whatever the problem was, not Rebellion-lite "Resistance" armed militia. I wanted some of the political aspects of what it means to overthrow tyranny and re-establish some sort of democracy, and what it's like when you have to reconcile a violent past with a future in which you have to work alongside those you used to fight against because they, too, would have a constituency.

Yes, I too would have liked to see something a little different than an essentially rehashed Rebel/Empire thing. It probably wouldn't have been as attractive to newer fans, but something a little more insidious like a new Galactic Republic teetering on the edge of civil war or having to put down some old Empire-influenced insurrections while the Sith work on subverting the Solo/Skywalker families from within or penetrating Luke's fledgling Jedi temple, etc. If they really wanted to be bold they could have gone for something Yuuzhan Vong-like, where the emerging Republic has to deal with a terrifying external threat and is ill-equipped to do so because they've just dismantled all the Empire's power structures that they now need, etc. Though I know Vong specifically was something a lot of fans didn't like.

1 hour ago, Ran said:

My guess is Abrams figured that they'd discover Luke had some important reason to be wherever he was -- guarding an artifact of immense power, or guarding some evil Sith site that could doom the galaxy, or he was a prisoner but had vital information, or _something_ -- and certainly I'm sure everyone who watched TFA came out with the idea that Luke was doing something so important that he went off the grid and was letting the Resistance be chipped away at because what he was doing was more vital.

They sort of tried to rescue it in IX by alluding to Luke's search for Exogol and having the Wayfinder in his notes. It didn't really redeem the treatment of his character in TLJ but I suppose it tried to rehabilitate a little bit of his image, that he was doing something. I sympathise with the writers a little bit in this case. While I don't like Luke's arc in TLJ, I don't know what the best answer would have been. They clearly needed him out of the picture, in order to allow new characters to take on challenges and not have Grand Master Luke scythe his way through everything.

[sifth]

4 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I just had a thought, and I'm sure it's not totally original, but hey: a lot of people blamed RJ for their dissatisfaction with how Luke was in TLJ, and yeah, I don't agree with every decision (I think they needed to find a better breaking point than him standing over a child ready to murder him while sleeping), but...

...who was it that laid down the idea that Luke had vanished years ago and was found on an isolated planet all on his own? That was Abrams. Clearly wanting Luke to be a Yoda figure but Yoda had a reason to have gone off into hiding and JJ didn't think that out. Johnson had to find some plausible reason why Luke would do the same thing.

And in doing so RJ ignored the fact that Luke left a map for his friends to find him.

[Raja]

1 minute ago, sifth said:

And in doing so RJ ignored the fact that Luke left a map for his friends to find him.

The map was to the Jedi temple, I don't think it was left specifically for his friends to find him

[sifth]

10 minutes ago, Raja said:

The map was to the Jedi temple, I don't think it was left specifically for his friends to find him

So why did he leave the final piece in R2-D2, if not for his friends to find him?

[Ran]

2 hours ago, Raja said:

Luke guarding an artifact or some evil Sith site would have been incredibly lame.

It's all in the execution. I had one idea that I posted somewhere ages ago, to address Hamill's complaint that Luke did not feel like Luke to him at all, and that it didn't fit what he knew Lucas had planned, while maintaing the basic shape of the plot: namely, that Luke insists on staying not because he claims the galaxy is better off without him, but that he insists that he knows something terrible will happen if he leaves, and it has to do with the dark side mirror cave. Rey tries to convince him to go despite this, faces the cave herself, and ends up leaving. Moved by her courage, moved by her choice, he decides to go into the cave and try to eradicate the dark side energy there... and in so doing learns that the thing keeping him there all along was him, his guilt and trauma. But it's too late for him to leave now, he wont' arrive in time -- unless... and he goes up to the cliff and does what he does. (I would even have used the idea that he harnessed the concentration of the Force on Ahch-to to be able to project himself as he did, really, so that in an ironic sense his belief that if he left something terrible would happen is also, basically, right.)

You get all that arc for Luke, but you tie it into his having convinced himself he was being heroic even if it meant risking the lives of his friends and family, risking Snoke and the First Order taking over, etc. The fact that he was deluding himself due to his trauma over what happened with Ben and his fledgling Jedi Order would just add to the complexity.

(And given the events of TRoS, I can see something else, and who knows, maybe this was something Abrams and his team noodled with... namely that he believes if he goes, something terrible will happen... and he's ultimately convinced by Rey to do it, that he's needed, that the cost doesn't matter.... and the terrible thing that will happen is not some Force technobabble, but basically that his moving out into the galaxy to confront Kylo and save the Rtesistance from the First Order means that events that follow will doom Rey to turn to the dark side. There's something very tragic in the thought of that story, although I suppose some will complain about predestination.

But roads not traveled.)

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I also think putting the blame of Rian Johnson is a little weird and seem like a crutch to excuse bad story telling from the TROS writing team

I think a lot of people who left TLJ unhappily is that they felt -- and Abrams seems to agree -- that TLJ basically removed an easy throughline for the final entry in the trilogy and the final entry in the Star Wars saga. The "terrible pacing" of the TRoS first act and a half is basically a race to set the table that RJ refused to do, or at least did in such a way that it was incompatible with a ready solution.

I saw very little speculation about "What's next" post-TLJ that felt like it would be able to be satisfying. Kylo was too complicated a villain to be able to make him the "big bad" in a clean way that can be resolved in 2.5 hours.

1 hour ago, Jeor said:

They sort of tried to rescue it in IX by alluding to Luke's search for Exogol and having the Wayfinder in his notes. It didn't really redeem the treatment of his character in TLJ but I suppose it tried to rehabilitate a little bit of his image, that he was doing something.

You know, I did not realize that that was what they were doing until you said it. Huh. That said, surely the Exogol business and tracking the Jedi hunter were events that took place prior to his establishing the Jedi temple? I'm thinking once the trail went cold, and he wasn't able to find any more information, he turned his eyes to teaching.

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I sympathise with the writers a little bit in this case. While I don't like Luke's arc in TLJ, I don't know what the best answer would have been. They clearly needed him out of the picture, in order to allow new characters to take on challenges and not have Grand Master Luke scythe his way through everything.

I think that was a real part of it. I do think Johnson was wrong to frame Luke staying away in the way he did, given how strongly Hamill argued against it (and how strongly many fans have argued against it), but I do think he could have done something like it, something humanizing and complex, without making the character act out of some deliberate pessimism.

59 minutes ago, sifth said:

So why did he leave the final piece in R2-D2, if not for his friends to find him?

Good point here. Luke clearly intended, when he set out, to allow people to find him in extreme need, but he wanted it to be difficult so that he wasn't easy to find. 

[RumHam]

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, I don't think they said he never died. Merry Brandybuck (apparently a great expert of Sith lore just as he can competently explain Fangorn stuff) knows that cloning did the trick.

He suggests cloning as a possibility but given that palps looked like shit I took that to be his original body. I was actually just reading this article on the subject. 

[RumHam]

6 hours ago, Toth said:

Well, Alderaan is where Leia's father is, who is an important founder of the rebel alliance. I assume that the construction of the Death Star had many of the rebels shitting bricks, so they had to gather all allies they could and have an emergency meeting on how to bring it down with the plans they've already stolen. In fact, now that I think more about it Leia being so familiar with Obi-Wan and thinking it quite possible for him to join the alliance could easily be interpreted as Obi-Wan having been in contact with Bail the entire time, keeping taps on the state of the galaxy (and of course Leia's well-being). So he's acting nowhere near the broken recluse some in this thread want to make him out to be

Doesn't Rogue One cover why the "get obi-wan" and "deliver death star plans" plans got combined? They learn about the death star but can't agree to attack it. Bail tells Mothma he's gonna send Leia to get Obi-Wan cause they need every advantage. Then the main cast of the movie go without permission to Scarrif and the rest of the rebels decide to help. So Leia was getting ready to head to tatooine when the larger ship carrying her ship was redirected to scarrif and they ended up being the one's who got the plans. 

[Ran]

12 minutes ago, RumHam said:

He suggests cloning as a possibility but given that palps looked like shit I took that to be his original body. 

My own read was that getting a malign Dark Side ghost to reoccupy a cloned body leads to it degenerating rapidly, hence his seemingly having pieces that have rotted or fallen off, and hence his interest in finding his successor. 

[Raja]

44 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's all in the execution.

That I agree with. If you watched the making of The Last Jedi called 'The director and the Jedi' - there is some frank discussion in that about Mark Hammil's misgivings about the direction Luke goes to, as you allude to, but by the end of the documentary, I think even he comes around to why Luke going to that place in TLJ. I happen to really like it, but I totally understand that some people were not fond of his character in TLJ.

55 minutes ago, Ran said:

The "terrible pacing" of the TRoS first act and a half is basically a race to set the table that RJ refused to do, or at least did in such a way that it was incompatible with a ready solution.

See - that's the thing, I think a more talented writing team, one that has some experience in writing original stories or stories that don't have to rely so heavily on invoking nostalgia would have been a better choice as opposed to JJ & Terrio. I know that sounds harsh, but Terrio fills me with zero confidence given his history of making two of the most incomprehensible super hero action movies in the last 5 years ( I think JJ works well with a decent writer beside him, but Terrio was not that person)

The endless mcguffin chase that forms the bulk of the movie gets in the way of any character beats or development - that is the reason I don't buy the RJ criticism, it was the writers of TROS that thought that the endless fetch quest stuff was a good idea ( and maybe that could have worked if the execution was better, but it was not)

[Ran]

22 minutes ago, Raja said:

he endless mcguffin chase that forms the bulk of the movie gets in the way of any character beats or development - that is the reason I don't buy the RJ criticism, it was the writers of TROS that thought that the endless fetch quest stuff was a good idea ( and maybe that could have worked if the execution was better, but it was not)

I know nothing of Terrio, so can't say anything about him, but I think from my perspective the issue is this: with Snoke dead, a "Big Bad" is needed, and they (rightly, I think) can't see how to make Kylo that character, so they go for Palpatine (who I think was the Abrams plan from the start, as Simon Pegg said he'd spoken to him about his ideas and one of them was giving Rey a "relevant lineage"). So they have to reveal him early, because a late reveal of a character who by all rights should have been revealed in the 2nd film would just compound their problems. But now, they revealed him at the start of the film... what's the excuse for not going to him and defeating him ASAP? Hence plot complications are needed. The plot coupons was an inelegant way to do this, but it was expedient when they had less than 2 and a half hours to play with. 

I agree they did _too_ much jumping around, but another factor, I suspect, was Carrie Fisher's death and their having to work around that while honoring, as far as they could, Abrams's plans for her role in it.  I feel like if she had been alive to film new material she might have been more present and thus less time-wasting needed.

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

He suggests cloning as a possibility but given that palps looked like shit I took that to be his original body. I was actually just reading this article on the subject. 

Well, if fan theories have to explain shit, we are talking about a shitty movie. In fact, it seems as if that's movies done to today - give a hint of an explanation or a theory for something completely ridiculous and then have the audience/fan explain it - rather than them making sense of the story. And that kind seems to be especially rampant in the 'supernatural genres'. I rarely watched a romance or a historical peace where the kind of equivalent to the Palpatine resurrection happened without explanation (although I must say I've difficulty imagining how this could have looked).

Obviously the Snoke thingy in the tank indicates cloning - unless the guy were the remains of the original Snoke Palpatine wanted to keep for some reason, but how a clone can be the original Palpatine at all is unclear (something 'Dark Empire' actually did explain in a couple of sentences). Also what his issues now are, what it means that he seems to have blind eyes, why this King-Ommin-like apparatus seems to steady him, and why he - in this shape - is still strong enough to suck power from Rey/Ben in the end?

Nothing is explained in this movie - and that's makes this whole plot entire nonsense. I mean, honestly, would you buy this plot if you didn't know about the 'Dark Empire' thing? Or would you buy this plot in any other SF/fantasy franchise if it was left this unexplained? Even the return of Darth Maul in TCW made more sense than this...

2 hours ago, Ran said:

My own read was that getting a malign Dark Side ghost to reoccupy a cloned body leads to it degenerating rapidly, hence his seemingly having pieces that have rotted or fallen off, and hence his interest in finding his successor. 

With there being no talk about cloned bodies there is pretty much no basis for this as per the movie as such. Especially since it is rather convenient (for the casting and the makeup artists) that a presumed clone body of Palpatine's is old enough to be played by Ian McDiarmid and looks exactly like Emperor Palpatine post-Force lightning.

ROTS explained why the guy looked like he did - and it had nothing to do with the use of the dark side and everything with him (deliberately) blasting himself with reflected lightsaber reflected Sith lightning. Did he have one of his goons have reflect lightning back on him to look that way?

3 hours ago, Ran said:

I saw very little speculation about "What's next" post-TLJ that felt like it would be able to be satisfying. Kylo was too complicated a villain to be able to make him the "big bad" in a clean way that can be resolved in 2.5 hours.

If you do kill the Snoke guy in the second movie you do need to have a plan. That the creep kid was no presentable villain was clear from the first movie. I mean, seriously, what's the benefit of having two Palpatines in a single trilogy. They had their Palpatine 2.0 with Snoke - they only needed the original when the copy cat was dead. If they wanted to go with the Palpatine stuff there was no need to keep that a secret until the second or third movie - it would have just as great a surprise in TFA. And that way they could have properly connected all that with the Luke story and also had had time to 'sort of explain' how it was possible that Palpatine was still around.

In fact, that they failed to actually give us a character who oversaw the cloning bodies, who loyally helped his master to return, etc. really ensures that this kind of plot doesn't work all that well.

As for that map thing in TFA:

That's just utter nonsense because they actually sell this, at times, as 'the magical map to Luke Skywalker' as if he himself were a location or a planet not a person with access to spaceships and the like and thus able to fly around and, you know, leave whatever place the map they have points toward.

[RumHam]

25 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, if fan theories have to explain shit, we are talking about a shitty movie. In fact, it seems as if that's movies done to today - give a hint of an explanation or a theory for something completely ridiculous and then have the audience/fan explain it - rather than them making sense of the story. And that kind seems to be especially rampant in the 'supernatural genres'.

Totally agree. 

25 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

In fact, that they failed to actually give us a character who oversaw the cloning bodies, who loyally helped his master to return, etc. really ensures that this kind of plot doesn't work all that well.

I'm not sure, but I think this character may have been introduced on The Mandalorian. 

A Moff played by Giancarlo Esposito

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, RumHam said:

He suggests cloning as a possibility but given that palps looked like shit I took that to be his original body. I was actually just reading this article on the subject. 

I don't think it can be his original body because his original body exploded when Vader hurled it down the Death Star pit.

The way the explosion happened - his energy surged out and then back in - might suggest that his spirit was transferred to another body or something at that point.

[Lord Varys]

Just now, RumHam said:

Totally agree. 

In a very obvious re-using Palpatine is the ultimate and rather explicit revelation of incompetence. They couldn't and wouldn't come up with a genuine villain of their own, just as they couldn't/didn't come up with a plot of their own. Even 'their conflicted villain-hero' is essentially another version of Darth Vader.

Just now, RumHam said:

I'm not sure, but I think this character may have been introduced on The Mandalorian. 

 

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As long as it isn't Mas Amedda or Sate Pestage I'll complain ;-).

That aside - even if they do this the movie/place to explain it would have been TROS, not some TV show half the audience might not even watch.

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I don't think it can be his original body because his original body exploded when Vader hurled it down the Death Star pit.

The way the explosion happened - his energy surged out and then back in - might suggest that his spirit was transferred to another body or something at that point.

Talks I had with people indicate that many refer to the Palpatine caricature as 'blind Palpatine' or 'zombie Palpatine', so we cannot really say that people who don't know about the EU clone Emperor do not necessarily jump on that idea.

Although I definitely agree that we would have to assume that the original body exploded - not just because of the explosion thingy in the shaft, but also because the second Death Star also exploded shortly thereafter. Palpatine essentially exploded twice.

[Werthead]

2 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Talks I had with people indicate that many refer to the Palpatine caricature as 'blind Palpatine' or 'zombie Palpatine', so we cannot really say that people who don't know about the EU clone Emperor do not necessarily jump on that idea.

Although I definitely agree that we would have to assume that the original body exploded - not just because of the explosion thingy in the shaft, but also because the second Death Star also exploded shortly thereafter. Palpatine essentially exploded twice.

The fact that the Death Star exploded into a trillion pieces in RotJ but it appears pretty large sections of it landed intact on Endor without obliterating the moon shows that perhaps Abrams wasn't paying attention to any of this.

There's also the bit where Rey is inside the Death Star wreckage and the curvature of the station is visible, which would not be the case if it was really the canonical size of 160km (the canon reset dropping the ludicrous old 900km figure down a reactor shaft is a relief) in diameter. Abrams really is just that shit at working out distances or the laws of physics.

[Kalbear]

9 hours ago, Toth said:

Obi-Wan is a Jedi looking after Luke and Jedi are shown to be able to perceive when someone close to them is in danger from half the galaxy away. It is not too far of a stretch to assume that when Luke headed out alone to search for R2 Obi-Wan would sense that he'd get into trouble and come towards him. I mean seriously, that's his one job, so I assume he's going to do it. Also from what the dialogue between 3PO and R2 heavily implies, R2 knows where Obi-Wan lives. That's his only goal during the entirety of this part of the movie, rolling towards Obi-Wan's hut in a straight line no matter who gets in his way. Connecting that with above observation that Bail must have known Obi-Wan's whereabouts and given them to Leia to go get him, it seems actually quite possible that Leia gave R2 the coordinates. What else was Leia's plan to reach Obi-Wan if she doesn't know where he lives? Tatooine isn't exactly a small place to look for a single person, being a planet and all...

The only reason that Obi-Wan is looking for R2 is because of Luke, right - without Luke being there, R2 just wanders around and gets smashed by some raiders or something. 

Again, HUGE contrivances to get R2 to Obi-Wan on its own. Even if R2 knows the coordinates (and there's no sign of that in the movies), the idea that R2 could just roll across a desert to get to him? Come on. 

9 hours ago, Toth said:

Would Obi-Wan go without Luke? Hardly. Obi-Wan didn't fight for the alliance so far exactly because he knew that he can't take on Vader and the Emperor on his own, that only Luke has the potential to bring the fight to the empire. Luke getting the droids in itself is pretty inconsequencial because no matter who bought the droids, R2 would still escape and go to Obi-Wan one way or another. Basically Obi-Wan would only accept Leia's call to arms if Luke goes with him. If the Lars' refuse to let him just walk in and grab Luke for some adventuring, then he'd just stay where he is. It's the stormtroopers killing Luke's aunt and uncle for buying the droids that actually gets the ball rolling. 

I don't think any of that is a reasonable supposition. Sorry, don't buy it. But even if it is accurate - let's go with the notion that Lars says no, Luke says no, and they just sit on the planet. Empire wins, game over. So even in your best scenario the whole story is busted.

9 hours ago, Toth said:

But then again, I don't think you are getting why I think those are two different kinds of coincidences. In ANH or any half-way decent movie there is always cause and effect in play. There may be events without which the story wouldn't get rolling, but it is at least possible to trace the following events back to them. There is a logic even in circumstantial events. It's not like characters magically know where to go to make the plot happen or characters acting in complete disregard of common sense or just their established characterization to make plot happen. That's the kind of contrivances I'm talking about.

Exactly - my point is that you conveniently ignore them when they're about movies you like, and focus on them when they're movies you don't like. The Jakku thing is a good example - you can use all of those fanwanks about Obi-Wan in the same way as Max Von Sydow if you like. Boom, all the issues go away, right? It's not like we have textual examples of what you're talking about; what makes that explanation not as strong?

I would argue because you're simply unwilling to give the charity to one, and willing to give the charity to the other. 

But even with all that, it is beyond bizarre coincidence that C3P0 and R2D2 end up with Luke and his family given what we know about the prequels, or even with what we know about why Obi-Wan is there on Tattooine at all. 

[Ran]

Pixar's Rule #19:

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Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.